Hymnals, Too

I actually started work on an index for my fantasy hymnal last night, beginning with excerpting everything worthwhile from the two hymnals that were already next to me: Worship III and Gather.

I can report that I took about a third of the hymns that are in Worship. Note that the hymns make up about a third of the book, and I only took a third of them. So, by my calculations, 1/9th of the book is worth using. No reason for it to be as fat and heavy as it is.

Almost anything worthwhile from Gather is duplicated in Worship, so only two additional hymns from Gather made it onto my list.

Next I will more thoroughly examine the Adoremus hymnal, but I suspect I will not have many additions from that corner. I think there's hardly anything in Adoremus that isn't also in Worship; the Adoremus hymnal is kind of like a Worship hymnal with all the bad stuff taken out, and a decent order of Mass in English and Latin inserted, which is why it is half the size and a third of the weight of Worship.

On Hymnals

image source


I was recently asked, casually, what hymnal I would pick if I had my choice. I'm sure that the friend who asked me this had no idea what a can of worms she was opening up. She probably thought I'd just be able to name one. Unfortunately, it's not that easy. There is no Catholic hymnal in existence that would be able to stand on its own for parish use. Any one that you picked would have to be supplemented almost every week by worship aids with lyrics in them. I've yet to come across a Catholic hymnal that isn't plagued by at least one of three things: heresy, poor selection, or really bad music. Here are some examples:

St. Gregory
The organ accompaniments are atrocious, and the original compositions are lackluster at best. Also, since the only available edition is a reprint from 70 years ago, it's out of date; there has actually been good stuff written in that time period that I'd like to include.

Traditional Roman Hymnal
Useful for the SSPX, I suppose, but though I really like the selection they have, I presumably will always be employed in OF or combination EF-OF parishes, and there aren't enough English hymns to make it useful for that.

Worship III
Well, aside from the obvious problems of objectionable '70s and '80s hymnody, it doesn't contain enough hymns in some of its various categories to make it sustainable for year-round use. For instance, there are only nine hymns in the section marked "Eucharist." Now, of course you can use other hymns during Communion, if you're going to sing hymns then, but really? Nine was the best you could do? There are that many in a throwaway missalette! Also, it's really fat and heavy, kind of difficult to hold with one hand.

Gather
I'm including this one because, along with Worship III, it's what we currently have in our pews. Do I really need to say why I don't like it? I object to a lot of the music in it on artistic and theological grounds.

Collegeville
Plagued with a combination of the problems of Gather and Worship III. Fat, heavy, and with a lot of pretty awful music.

Adoremus
None of the music in it is objectionable, there just isn't enough of it. It might be useful for a school or for a chapel where they don't have Mass year-round, but in a parish setting its small selection will become boring pretty quickly.

The Parish Book of Chant
Does what it says on the cover. It's not a replacement for an OF hymnal. Also, the selection is pretty small, if those are the only things you expect the congregation to sing. If I expected my parishioners to do a lot of singing in Latin, I'd get a Kyriale and a Liber Cantualis.


I know there are probably others that I've left out. My parish is going to get new hymnals later this year, before Advent. They're getting Gather Comprehensive, the one I really, really don't want, but I'm only a lowly choir member here, wife of the organist, and I have no say. My poor husband--they asked him if he'd rather see a permanent hymnal or throwaway missalettes, and he said hymnal. He had no idea it was going to be that!

The only hymnals I've ever seen that I genuinely liked and thought useful were Anglican. If I were in charge of my own music program and had to get new hymnals, I'd either buy Anglican hymnals and attack them with white-out and scissors (by way of editing), or use a print-on-demand service and make my own. I would not expect the hymnal to also serve as a hand missal.

I'd probably want to have two books in the pews: one would be something like the Gregorian Missal, with all the proper chants, but would leave out most of the feast days and include the readings and a Kyriale. Basically, a hand missal with notated music. The other book would have some (probably seasonal) Simplex Propers and a largish selection of solid hymns in English and Latin. I really think that an arrangement like this, though probably expensive, would be able to provide all of the congregational music for an idealized Ordinary Form-only parish, in which you'd have a sort of Low Mass early in the morning, with all vernacular hymns, a later Mass (or the anticipated Mass) with Simplex Propers and hymns, and a mostly- or all-Latin High Mass in the late morning with the Gregorian Propers.

Update

I asked my husband how he felt about seeing women breastfeed. He said that he was a little unnerved the first couple of times, but he has now seen it often enough that he's used to it.

I hope that someday, many more men in the U.S. will be able to say the same: that seeing a woman breastfeed in public, or even just in her own living room with family and friends around, is a perfectly normal part of life. Unfortunately, this is not yet the case.

Feed that Kid

I was in the local grocery store on Monday to pick up some last-minute items for our awesome Valentine's dinner. As I hoofed it past the dairy refrigerators, I noticed what appeared to be an abandoned shopping cart with a toddler standing next to it. He was poking the gallon milk jugs. I peered around to see if the child's mother was nearby. She was sitting on the floor across from the milk fridge with her back against one of those free-standing floor refrigeration units. She was on the floor because she was nursing the toddler's younger sibling.

I briefly thought about saying, "Good for you!" or something similar, but decided that it might be better just to leave her and the baby alone in recognition that flopping down on the floor in the middle of the store to nurse your baby should not be a cause for comment.

I used to be uncomfortable seeing other women nursing, but I think I've seen it often enough now that it doesn't phase me. Last week, I was in a restaurant with a friend, her younger daughter, and her 8-week old (the newly-baptized infant from my previous post), and she nursed the baby in the restaurant. She apologized for flashing me at one point while adjusting his latch, but I was involved in our conversation and had hardly noticed. Breastfeeding on demand is awesome, and I really hope I won't get a sudden case of shyness when my turn comes around. I still haven't asked my husband how he felt about seeing J. feed the baby in her living room when we were there for the post-baptism party. I do know how he felt about holding the baby: awkward and inadequate. Poor guy has very little baby-holding experience. We'll have to work on that!

New Catholic

I went to a baptism today, of a friend's new baby. At the party afterward, I got to hold the new little Christian for quite a long time. I am totally blissed out on that chrism-annointed-baby smell. Isn't that one of the best smells in the world? I think my top three favorite smells are, in no particular order, newly baptized baby, incense and beeswax, and roast chicken. I know the last one is a little incongruous compared to the first two, but all three have to do with celebration of various sorts.

Leave the Poor Priest Alone

I'm not talking about bugging the priest to do this or that thing that should be part of his job, if you think he's not doing it properly (although there are probably some people who need to stop that, too). I'm talking about stalking him.

On Saturday night, we had a nice dinner with Fr. M and some other friends. Fr. M confided in us, without offering any identifying information, that he has a couple of women who are more-or-less stalking him. They show up in his office without an appointment, seem to follow him everywhere, give him excessive numbers of presents. I think many priests, perhaps especially young and good-looking ones, become the victims of this kind of behavior.

I know as well as anyone that people sometimes develop inappropriate crushes. I don't know if women are more prone to this than men, although I do know that there seems to be more of a phenomenon of women who hang around priests and seminarians than of men who hang around nuns and novices. Maybe the priests and seminarians are just out there, accessible in the world, and the nuns aren't. At any rate, at some point a woman, especially a lonely woman, might develop a crush on a priest or seminarian. If you are that woman, or know someone who is, repeat after me: Leave Him Alone. His life is hard enough without you making it more difficult. If he is a good priest, or a seminarian who is confident in his vocation, you'll just take up time he could be spending doing his job, studying or helping people who really need his help. If he is weak in his vocation, and likely to be tempted to give in to your inappropriate requests, then he's not the sort of man you should be pursuing anyway. If he can't be faithful to his vocation as a priest, then he might not be faithful to you either, if he left the priesthood for you.

So, if you develop an inappropriate crush, don't hang around him. Bring it up in confession with some other priest, or with your psychiatrist or a very trustworthy friend, if you really need to talk about it. Otherwise, keep it to yourself, get a new hobby, and try to stop thinking about it. Leave the priest alone.

Ice

Our little world is covered in it. The dog plays hockey with frozen leaves, my husband stays home because the school is closed and choir practice is cancelled. All the businesses are shut, and hardly anyone dares to drive down the street. It's very quiet, except for the crackling log fire and the steady drip of slightly melting icicles.

It's Funny, But Also Not

My husband's boss forwarded this "meditation" by Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM to my husband today, saying, "I think this encapsulates how you, your wife, and our parochial vicar feel."


CULTURE OF ELDERS
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Feast of the Baptism of Jesus


Today, many young people and clergy long to return to an earlier and false innocence that never existed. I understand these psychological needs. We must start with some experience of order, or we will not have the ego structure to move forward. In the first half of life, the psyche demands structure before it can possibly deal with anti-structure.

These young people want to return to a romanticized church and world of the past that they idealize from a distance. They hope that it will provide the clarity, status, and certitude that they do not enjoy and that their ego needs.

We all need some still point in the midst of the tornado of postmodernism. But the trouble is, all the biblical God ever promised us was God himself as that still point—never an institution, role, social order or country. These are human-created idols that we worship in the place of God.

Adapted from Adam’s Return, pp. 79-80 (book/audiobook)


So, my husband's boss thinks we're naive idiots? I know this is not a new criticism leveled at those of us "young people" who have an affinity for tradition. Still, I'm an academic for heaven's sake! Does he think that my dissertation research hasn't involved examining the real state of music before Vatican II as well as after? Does he think we don't know about 15-minute Low Masses and schlocky hymns? This is not to mention all the study of sacred music in earlier periods, none of which were perfect, but some of which were, perhaps, further from perfection than others. Our parochial vicar has explicitly said that he prefers the OF to the EF, although he also believes in chant, plenty of incense and "Say the Black, do the Red."

Honestly, it's a bit upsetting that my husband's boss not only thinks we're idiots and children, but has the nerve to basically tell us that to our faces. Of course, it also makes me want to laugh a little bit, because it shows how little reading he's been doing regarding who, exactly, is taking part in this revival of tradition in the Church, and what their reasoning is.

As for Fr. Richard Rohr, well, I don't have a lot of faith in the analysis of someone who's written multiple books on the Enneagram.

It's 5 O'Clock
Lamb marinates in wine, olive oil, garlic, and some sea salt from the package that was in the Pascha basket we took to St. Andrews Russian Catholic church to be blessed last year.


























The laundry waits to be folded.

















Dinner is on-the-fly tonight because of choir practice, rather than at the dining room table, but I still feel smug about my Christmas dining table decorations.













The dog waits forlornly for his dinner. Just a little bit longer, honey!








The star on the tree lights the way for the Magi. Our parish, like most others in the US, celebrated Epiphany on Sunday, but at home we will wait the full twelve days before the Magi arrive at our creches. The decorations will probably remain up until after the Baptism of the Lord next Sunday.

Communion Antiphon for the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time





I don't often get fits of inspiration, but I did this afternoon. Here is a fairly simple, two-part setting in English of a Communion Antiphon. If the ending sounds a bit odd, that's because it's modal; the beginning and end are loosely based on the chant. I've licensed it under Creative Commons, so if you like it, take it, copy it, and sing it, as long as you leave my name on it. I didn't write out any verses, but you can sing the one provided by Bruce Ford in American Gradual, and then sing the antiphon again.

Usually I am not pleased with my attempts at writing music, but I think this is pretty ok. There aren't too many leaps, the ranges are small, it's only two parts...I think it's singable. If anyone is reading this, let me know what you think.